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Twitter Applying To Have 'Tweet' TrademarkedJuly 2

Twitter is attempting to gain some kind of control of the use of "Twitter" and "Tweet" in a way that reminds me of Google’s attempt back in 2006.

TechCrunch got its hand on an email that was sent out to one Twitter app developer:

Hi,

Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

Thanks,

That prompted an official response from Twitter’s chief of damage control Biz Stone. The use of "Twitter" appears to be pretty much off limits, but his comments about using "Tweet" have me puzzled:

We have applied to trademark Tweet because it is clearly attached to Twitter from a brand perspective but we have no intention of "going after" the wonderful applications and services that use the word in their name when associated with Twitter. In fact, we encourage the use of the word Tweet. However, if we come across a confusing o

Internet Marketing Trying To Police Itself On Privacy IssuesJuly 2

An important element (read: selling point) of Internet marketing is the ability to know more about consumers and their behaviors. Everything can be tracked on the Internet, for the most part, and there is obvious value to marketers and their efforts. The flip side of this ability to track people is the privacy issue and lately the US government has been raising it’s regulatory eyebrows at the online world. In the past this may not have been such big news but with the current administration’s bend toward a ‘name it and claim it’ government style, web advertisers are looking to self police before they draw any more attention from the feds.

Yahoo Tech reports on the efforts of a group of advertising associations that have come together to build a set of rules and regulations that the industry can use to give the consumer the privacy they expect and let marketers keep the freedoms that government intervention would likely hinder.

The centerpiece of these guidelines are the provision of transparency in tracking practices and easier opt-out for consumers. While it is certainly a big question as to how well these guidelines will actually work the hope is that the industry will be less of a focus of the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and Congress.

Twitter Uncomfortable With 'Tweet' Being Used In Third Party AppsJuly 1

Looks like Twitter is not looking the other way as much these days. TechCrunch reports that there is some concern at the social networking company that developers are using the term ‘Tweet’ too much. Twitter, in fact, is claiming that the use of that trademark in the naming of any third party app is something they are ‘uncomfortable’ with. Here is an e-mail that was passed along to the TechCrunch folks relating to the subject.

Hi,

Twitter, Inc is uncomfortable with the use of the word Tweet (our trademark) and the similarity in your UI and our own. How can we go about having you change your UI to better differentiate your offering from our own?

Thanks,

The original reason for the e-mail was apparently around a developers attempt to have a UI so similar to Twitter’s that it may have been confused for the real deal. In the hashing out of that information the above e-mail was sent and the questions are starting to flow.

Apparently Twitter has applied for a trademark . Commentor Rich Hill stated

I just checked the US Patent Office and Trademark website and “TWEET” trademark has been applied for on April 14, 2009 but has not yet been finalized.

Flickr Just Now Allowing Connectivity With TwitterJuly 1

VentureBeat reports that Flickr is finally enabling its users to tweet their photos on the service.

What took them so long? Flickr now has a built-in feature that lets members tweet their photos. “You can upload directly to Flickr and Twitter simultaneously, or tweet a photo already on Flickr, using a special short Flic.kr URL,” says the company’s FAQ. It also explains how to post photos from your phone, and how to tweet from Flickr.

Flickr spelled out the “how to’s” in the following from their PR firm

To use Flickr 2 Twitter, members need to first authorize Flickr to post to their Twitter accounts. Once authorized, members will be able to tweet photos from the “Blog This” button on their photo page or from their mobile devices.

Mobile uploading is possible once members enable their Upload by Email settings (unique Flickr email upload address + “2twitter”). After you’ve successfully tweeted your Flickr photo, it will look something like this.

Is there anything else out there that hasn’t joined the Twitter trend?

Hulu Receives Good News Concerning Their Online Ad FormatJune 30

paidContent has two pieces of good news for Hulu in the past week—they’re commanding not only similar ad prices to broadcast television, but also 10% of the online video ad market.

From a Bloomberg report, paidContent shows that, for some shows, CPMs on Hulu are actually greater than they are for broadcast TV. And when I say broadcast TV, we’re talking primetime, new episode, time-slot-leading network television. (None of that cable syndicated rerun stuff!) Bloomberg’s example:

Marketers typically pay $20 to $40 per thousand viewers for a prime-time ad. On Hulu, which began offering shows to the public in March 2008, an ad on the animated series “The Simpsons” costs $60 per thousand viewers, Michael Nathanson, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. wrote in a June 18 report.

How can the Internet, with demonstrably fewer viewers (another example, the NCAA basketball championship game, drew 17.6M TV viewers and 7.52 Internet viewers), command such high CPMs?

A couple factors: first, that t